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Grave Robbing for "The Benefit of the Living"

Rattle his bones over the stones, He’s only a pauper, whom nobody owns.  Imagine you are a sick pauper living in Cleveland, Ohio in 1855. For shelter and medical attention, you stay at the newly built City Infirmary, where faculty and students of the Cleveland Medical College offer their services. Alas, your illness cannot be cured and you die – friendless and alone. Your body is taken to the Potter’s Field in Woodland Cemetery across town. But there it is not to stay. In November 1855, the Cleveland police caught a young demonstrator of anatomy, Dr. Proctor Thayer, with two young medical...

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NYAM hosts Vesalius 500: Art and Anatomy

This October, the New York Academy of Medicine will host Art, Anatomy, and the Body: Vesalius 500, Guest curated by artist and anatomist Riva Lehrer On October 18, the NYAM's second-annual Festival for Medical History and the Arts, “Art, Anatomy, and the Body: Vesalius 500″ will celebrate the 500th birthday of anatomist Andreas Vesalius. Our own Brandy Schillace, research associate and guest curator for the Dittrick, will be one of the hosted speakers! Click here for the full schedule--and see below for a short description. Vesalius’ groundbreaking De humani corporis fabrica (The Fabric of the Human Body) of 1543 is a...

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The Problem with Bodies

Bodies--they have always been something of a problem. Even when in good working order, the body can be cumbersome, messy, demanding, and unpredictable. It runs down; it gets ill; it needs constant attention. Eventually, the body dies, but these adventures are far from over. Where do you put a dead body? Burial arose in part to combat the spread of disease, but death rituals vary with climate and geography. You can't bury your dead in the frozen ground of Tibet, nor can you build a pyre where no trees grow for use as fuel. How we deal with bodies...

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Haunting Images: Photography and Dissection, An Online Exhibit

Welcome back to the Dittrick Musuem Blog! Last week, we featured an online exhibit about dermatology and photography, featuring the work of William Thomas Corlett. This week, I will be presenting material that I have always found personally fascinating--a history of anatomy in pictures! This online exhibit features photographs from our collection of approximately three hundred dissection images (yes!). Most of these intriguing photographs feature a group of students gathered around the cadaver, either actively dissecting or just posing, often wearing their best suits. The students, not the cadavers. Well, not usually. Anatomical dissection and medical education. Beginning in fourteenth century Italy and lasting...

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